Species
There are numerous species throughout Azeroth, including orcs, humans, gnomes, trolls, and murlocs, among many others. There can also be generations of offspring from interfertile parents of two different species. They maybe the first generation of a new hybrid species . Many races can interbreed including dwarves, high elves, night elves, trolls, goblins, orcs, tauren - producing races like half-elves, half-night elves, half-ogres, half-human half-ogres, half-draenei, half-giants, mongrelmen, harpies and dragonspawn. These offspring are often called half-breeds. Satyr, dryads, keepers of the grove, centaur and magnataur may also be truly hybrid races. Definition In World of Warcraft, Blizzard interchanges the terms species and race giving them roughly the same meaning.http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/encyclopedia/339.xml Humans are the dominant (as in, “most obvious”) intelligent species on Azeroth, but they are by no means alone. Elves, dwarves, tauren, imports such as orcs, and so on all share the world with humanity. In some cases, such races have proven far more influential than humanity over the long term. In the Warcraft Universe races like elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, draenei, ogres, goblins, tauren, etc, are considered separate races/species. For example, since the beginning of the First War, orcs have interbred with a number of species that vary largely in appearance; mostly with humans, but half-ogres and half-draenei are not unheard of. The various types of trolls are usually considered separate subspecies, though occasionally separate species . The terms appear to be interchangeable to Blizzard. Known lore "species" *Human *Orc *Elf *Tauren *Dwarf *Troll *Murloc *Harpy *Dragon *Scalebane *Flametongue *Ogre *Gnome *Gnoll *Draenei *Quilboar Speculation based on real-world definition In real world biology, a species is more accurately defined as "the major subdivision of a genus or subgenus, regarded as the basic category of biological classification, composed of related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species"http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/species and the term is not to be confused with race. In reality there are examples of two separate species mating and having offspring. Usually this produces sterile offspring, but this is not always the casehttp://www.reference.com/search?q=species, because of this the term "species" is hard to truly define. See Hybrid, for a few examples of fertile hybrids. A good example is the debate on whether neanderthals and homo sapiens are the same species, separate subspecies, or different species, and if they could reproduce together (including whether the young would be fertile or infertile). Based on real world definitions, orcs and humans, may or may not belong to the same species, but not the same race. It would be within the realm of science that orcs and humans could still be classified as two seperate species even though they produce fertile offspring, similar to hybrids like the beefalo. Species speculation (based on known half-breeds) -o ├ Orc (Alleged: Fel Orcs) ├ Draenei (Alleged: Eredar, Broken, Lost Ones) ├ Human ├ Troll (Alleged: Night Elves, High elves, Blood elves, Wretched, Naga, Satyrs, Harpies) ├ Ogre -o ├ Earthen (Alleged: Iron Dwarves, Dwarves, Troggs) ├ Mountain Giant (Alleged: Sea Giants) -o ├ Gnome (Alleged: Leper Gnomes, Sand Gnomes) -o ├ Tauren (Alleged: Taunka) -o ├ Pandaren (Alleged: Furbolgs) -o ├ Cenarian ├ Centaur -o ├Aqir (Alleged: Qiraji, Nerubians) ├ Silithid -o ├ Mo'arg (Alleged: Felguard, Gan'arg) -o ├ Nathrezim (Alleged: Tothrezim) References